Day 18. Reading in Genesis 19 – 21. 

I invite you to read the scripture for the day and meditate on it. Then, share your thoughts in the comments.

 

Genesis 19.

I wonder if Abraham kept praying for his nephew Lot after plea-bargaining with God for Sodom and then going home.

When the two angels with the Lord at Abraham’s tent went down to Sodom, they found Lot sitting at the gate.  He’d gone from camping “near” Sodom to living “in” the city to now being an important man sitting as a judge “of” the city. 

Lot immediately knew the problem these two handsome angels would face in his wicked, immoral city. He begged them to stay at his house instead of in the town square. (He had to press them hard before they finally agreed.)

After dinner, a loud banging was heard at Lot’s door. The homosexual men of the town “wanted” the two men (angels) who were inside.  They were about to break the door down when Lot went out and offered them his two virgin daughters instead.  In their wicked lust, they refused and began forcing the door. One of the angels blinded the men and pulled Lot inside. BUT STILL, these blind homosexual men struggled to break the door down.

The angels urged Lot, his wife, and two daughters to evacuate the city, saying, “We are about to destroy this place because the outcry against its people has become great before the LORD, and He’s sent us to destroy it.”

At dawn, the family still refused to go, so the angels grabbed the four of them and brought them outside the city. “Escape for your life! Do not look back or stop anywhere in this valley. Escape to the hills unless you are swept away!!”

Lot dared to argue with them, saying he couldn’t reach the hills (too citified or too out of shape?) and begged to go to the next little town. The angels agreed to spare that city, but Lot had to get there quickly.  They ran (waddled?) toward Zoar, but Lot’s wife turned longingly for one last look at her beloved city.  

At that moment, the LORD rained down sulfur and fire from heaven and overthrew the inhabitants of the cities, all the valley, and all that grew on the ground.  And Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt.

.

Abraham awoke to a towering plume of black smoke (as from a furnace) billowing up from the valley. 

Whether Abraham ever saw Lot again, we don’t know. His nephew’s life spiraled down him from there. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. He became a drunkard. His daughters became pregnant through incest with him. Their descendants became the Moabites and Ammonites.  All because of his choice to go to the rich, green, luscious Sodom.

• Oh, Father, keep me attuned to Your will. Keep me from horrible choices in my life. Thank you for the ones in my past that you’ve forgiven. Help me to remember this story.

Genesis 20.

And lest we think Abraham is immune to temptation, we see him and Sarah journeying southward again. He stops in Gerar, the territory of King Abimelech, a Philistine.

“She’s my sister,” Abraham casually says, even though Sarah might already be carrying the embryo of Isaac in her womb!! 

Abimelech took Sarah as Abraham expected. BUT GOD came to him in a dream. “YOU ARE A DEAD MAN if you touch her. She is another man’s wife!”  God kept him from sinning and the king immediately gave Sarah back to Abraham.

“What have you done to us? How have I sinned against you that you did this to us?” the king demanded of Abraham.

“I-I did it because I thought you would kill me because of my wife since there is no fear of God here,” Abraham weaseled. “BESIDES, she IS my sister, well, my half-sister.”

Abimelech gives Abraham a lot of stuff, then says to Sarah, “I’ve given your brother a thousand pieces of silver as a sign of YOUR innocence in the eyes of all with you. Before everyone, YOU are vindicated.”

A good thing!  Some might have thought later that Abimelech was the father of Sarah’s baby.  OH, ABRAHAM, HOW YOU MIGHT HAVE MESSED THINGS UP!!!  Praise God for looking out for His stupid children!

• Yes, yes. I have done some pretty foolish, thoughtless things, too. Thank You, thank You, Father, for protecting me!  You are so good! And I am so undeserving.

Genesis 21.

At last! At last! “Laughter” is born!! 

On the baby’s eighth day, Abraham officially named him Isaac and circumcised him.  And Sarah said (perhaps even sang), “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have born him a son in his old age.”  Abraham was 100 years old. 

Several years later, at Isaac’s “official” weaning (3 years), Sarah catches Hagar’s son Ishmael LAUGHING at her son. (Ridiculing him)

“Get rid of this slave woman and her son. He will NOT be heir with my son, Isaac,” she demanded of her husband.

Abraham was grieved because he loved Ishmael, too. But God backed Sarah.  And, giving Hagar and the 17-year-old Ishmael food and water, he sent them away.  (What a shock to the former prince, Ishmael.)

God met with Hagar again when they ran out of water. He showed her another well and promised to bless her son into a great nation. Ishmael grew up to be an expert with the bow and arrow. They lived in the wilderness of Paran (Arabia today), and his mom got a wife for him from Egypt. 

(Seventy years later, when Abraham died, Ishmael returned briefly, and the two half-brothers buried their father in a cave near Hebron.  Genesis 25:8-9)

• And so, from Adam and Eve, through Noah and Shem, and now through Abraham and Isaac, God clears the way and establishes the “seed line” for the promised One who will defeat death and the devil forever.